I was watching an episode of Cold Case on tv (season 5 episode 7) and I learnt about this ball rooms during 20′s-30′s where male dancers paid to dance with the girls working as dancers: it was the swing era and these girls were known as taxi dancers, as they were rented just like taxies!

Other names was dime-a-dance girls (because each dance cost a dime), and nickel hoppers (because out of that dime, the girl usually got to keep five cents).

In Taxi-dance halls that had all the necessary business permits, their occupation was referred to as “dancer”. Among them there were also some professional secretaries who did moonlighting to earn more money.And this job was gainful indeed: working only a handful of hours an evening, frequently made two to three times the salary of a woman who might work in a factory or a store.

In those days, dancing was tremendously popular and all large American cities had public ballrooms, where people could hang out with their friends, meet new ones, and dance the evening away to a live jazz band.These public ballrooms admitted both men and women. Taxi-dance halls, though, were very different: the only women allowed were employees hired by the hall.

The taxi dancers was pretty and breezy and men paid just to have the privilege to dance with them.

Taxi-dance halls were very popular: customers buy a certain numer of tickets for 10 cents each. When a patron presented a ticket to a taxi dancer, she would dance with him for the length of a single song. The taxi dancers kept the ticket to collect their commissions at the end of the evening.

But this was absolutely considered not a respectable job. Most people assumed taxi dancers were prostitutes, and they, afraid of being disgraced, kept their jobs secret from their families. In fact, police and social agencies worried that it was a cover for prostitution, that the dancers would use the hall to solicit male customers. For this reason some cities passed laws requiring a policeman or social worker to chaperone the premises. Others prohibited dancers from meeting customers on the streets outside.

Of course it was possible that some women would consider pronstitution as the next step and a source of additionale income, and also men going there were probably alone and willing to give in to temptation of sex on payment, but I don’t wantto talk about this in this article…

By the way, after World War II the popularity of taxi dancing began to diminish, and most of the taxi-dance halls disappeared by the 1960s.